From King to Obama, by way of Chicago

Chicago is the city where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hit in the head with a brick.

Chicago is the city where Barack Obama rose to become president of the United States.

What happened to King took place 42 years ago in Marquette Park on the Southwest Side. Obama was elected on Tuesday, and he spoke to a diverse crowd of tens of thousands in Grant Park downtown.

There is a span of just more than 11 miles between the two parks. So if you had sturdy shoes, you could walk it in a long afternoon. But these are measurements of time and stride, and they are not enough.

In Marquette Park on Aug. 5, 1966, King led an open-housing march and was struck by angry, fearful whites who did not want black people living in their neighborhood.

"I've been in many demonstrations all across the South," a shaken King said after the brick knocked him to the ground, after a knife, hurled by another white, missed him but lodged in the neck of a white man marching with King. "But I can say that I have never seen -- even in Mississippi and Alabama -- mobs as hostile and hate-filled as I've seen in Chicago. I think the people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate."

And now, people from Mississippi will come to Chicago to learn how the first African-American president began his political career.

My cousin Jim Ekonomou was 10 years old and in Marquette Park that day in August, hoping to play baseball, out with his glove, looking for a pickup game, oblivious as King led the marchers west along 67th Street.

"Looking back, it was all about fear, and the marchers came and the crowds gathered and they started throwing things -- cherry bombs, firecrackers, rocks -- and screaming," Jim recalled. "I was just a little kid, and it was frightening to see the anger.

"It was just so strange, because our heroes were African-American ballplayers, like Ernie Banks and Bob Gibson, and everyone was screaming. You could see neighbors up on their porches with their shotguns in their laps.

"And now? I live in the suburbs; we have African-American neighbors; my kids are fascinated by Obama. I'm fascinated," Jim said. "You look back on it, if anybody looks back on it now, at all that fear then on all sides, if they can remember what it was really like, and you think, how far have we come?"

In Marquette Park the other day, as election workers prepared to open the polls, the afternoon was yellow and the trees were gold and it was warm. The Lithuanians and Irish who once lived nearby were gone. So was the American Nazi Party, which once had offices near the park where it stoked the hate.

Instead, Mexican teenagers were playing soccer in a pickup game on a field, the ball skittering over leaves on the grass, the forwards up, the defense heading the ball to midfield, as Lithuanians and Polish immigrants used to play during their Sunday family picnics, kicking the ball in their street shoes years ago.

But the boys playing soccer the other day didn't know about King and the brick.

"Who?" said a man named Hector, standing at the edge, watching the game in a black-and-gold hoodie with the hood up. "Who?"

At the lagoon, African-American men were fishing, as men have always fished that lagoon, with worms, bobbers and beer. They remember their parents telling them about that day.

"The difference is, black people can fish here now," said Mark Rachman, 41, fishing on the bank with his infant daughter in a stroller next to him. "There was a time we couldn't fish here. They'd kill you if you fished here. Now we're diverse. White people fish, Mexicans, African-Americans. We all fish."

The man next to him gave his name only as Tom. He had a black baseball hat on and a thin mustache and a worn-out paper cup of red worms on the sidewalk.

"The patterns don't change for people or fish," Tom said. "You still have the crappie and the bluegill here on this end, and up on the other end you'll find pike, and by the bridge is where you get largemouth bass. So Dr. King got hit by a brick and we're fishing and Obama can be president. But do people's hearts really change?"

There is a legitimate distance between the next president and many of us. Obama's policies will invariably feed the federal leviathan and shrink the scope of individual liberties envisioned by our founders.

Those who say opposition to Obama is primarily about race are like the haters in old Marquette Park, hurling their own fearful bricks.

No matter what side you're on, we should pray our thanks and ask for guidance for this young president-elect. After all the racial pain this country has inflicted upon itself, Tuesday shows us we can heal. A black man becomes president in a nation that once held slaves, and speaks to a city that loves him, the same city where Dr. King was struck to the ground.

The distance between then and now can't be measured in years or miles. But it can be measured by the heart. The heart of America. The heart of Chicago.